


Your Beating Heart

by ice_hot_13



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-02
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 12:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Losing Shaun was like losing his own heart; Desmond knows it's wrong, wrong that he and Shaun fell apart, wrong that Leonardo and Ezio did, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Memories have coordinates. Real time by emotional time, no matter what Rebecca says about years and nucleic acids. Desmond knows that memories are anchored down by time and emotions, not genetic material and numbers. The only thing that keeps them tied down like tethered balloons is why the time that created them is important and why the feelings they are charged with changed something. It doesn't matter what neurological pathways channeled them, and it doesn't matter what numbers are tied to them to signify time and place, all that matters is what happened around them, how it felt to live them. This is why some slip away, like balloons that are too loosely looped around a fencepost, because they weren't held onto tight enough. They simply floated away. There are empty gaps between memories Desmond visits in the Animus, he can only jump between the tied-down memories and work his way between them by living through it.

He imagines it's like walking down a path through a meadow, fence running along beside it, and every now and then, a balloon is tethered to the fence. He can see this so clearly, this green field and dirt path and brown wood fence, balloons batted about by the wind, and when he told Shaun this so long ago, Shaun had smiled and asked what would happen if he got to the end of the path or stepped off it entirely.

On a Thursday morning, Desmond is waiting as Rebecca configures the Animus, trying not to look at Shaun. Every time he looks at the historian, all he thinks about is the way Shaun used to moan when Desmond kissed him, and Desmond hasn't heard that in so long. He's only been back here a month, with Rebecca and Lucy and Shaun, and already it hurts so much.

"Desmond?" Rebecca points to the Animus, "Ready?" He nods blindly, tries to stop thinking about Shaun, even though that has never worked.

The memory is the wrong one. It's years too far ahead, and Desmond is going to tell Rebecca this when he notices something. He's in front of Leonardo's workshop, and there's no key in Ezio's pocket. Ezio has had a key to the workshop since the day Leonardo first kissed him.

Desmond realizes something is wrong when Leonardo doesn't smile when he opens the door. All Leonardo says is Ezio's name in a confused breath, but that's all it takes for Desmond to realize what has happened. The turmoil finally came between them; Leonardo got tired of being scared and Ezio stopped finding reasons to make himself so vulnerable. From the look on Leonardo's face and the dark sorrow Ezio feels, it's obvious. The world, in all its violent wrongness, finally came between them. The same thing happened to them as did to Desmond and Shaun. Something went wrong.

Desmond finally leaves the memory, tense with being freshly wounded. He can't feel it as deeply as he would have years ago, but it's so deeply numbing that it sparks pain. Rebecca is apologizing, saying something about the wrong coordinates, but she didn't need to tell him that. It felt wrong, so wrong, to feel that split between Ezio and Leonardo, to learn that, one day or maybe over many days, they stopped loving each other.

"What?" Rebecca asks, when Desmond only stares at her. He's never told them, not even Shaun, that Leonardo and Ezio were in love. It felt too much like he'd be betraying something deeply personal. He almost told Shaun, but was afraid it would be too serious, scared it would seem like suggesting, hinting, and however much of him wanted to do that, there was enough that didn't that scared him into keeping his silence.

"Nothing," he lies, because it's all he's able to do now. It's nothing, he's fine, it was inevitable, he doesn't miss Shaun, not at all, it doesn't hurt to breathe now. He can't remember the last time he told the truth.

"Why don't we take a break for a while?" she suggests, but Desmond shakes his head no. He spends as much time in the Animus as possible, where Leonardo loves Ezio and Ezio isn't afraid to love him back.

"I'll just go back to where we left off." It's coming, this heartbreaking split he's already lived through once, here where emotions can destroy him, but there's still time. Desmond would give anything for more, to go back to when Shaun talked about everything with him, when he looked up from his reading every few minutes to see if Desmond was still in the room, when he put a little more sugar in his tea so Desmond would steal some, when he found Desmond in the shower to kiss him and his mouth felt hotter than the water. Desmond wants to go back, before the world started to fall apart. Every time Shaun doesn't look at him, Desmond feels it again. The world didn't fall to pieces the day they said they stopped loving each other, it only started the breaking that still hasn't stopped. It's been three years since then, and the world still hasn't stopped breaking and breaking and breaking.

 

_The sunlight illuminates raindrops the night storm left on the window, casting a slant of light across the bed. Desmond wakes up cold. He tries to keep from sleeping with Shaun wrapped up in his arms; it's hard, so hard, but it's better than letting Shaun think Desmond loves him. Desmond does, so much, but there's the lingering regret that wants something easier. Hiding was difficult; convincing himself not to go back is even worse._

_Shaun is already awake and dressed; he used to stay in bed longer, curled against Desmond's side, before Desmond kept finding excuses to leave him. He's flipping through papers on the desk, licks the tip of his finger so he can thumb through a stack. This little motion is what Desmond first fell in love with, and Shaun has no idea. He moves on to another stack, and Desmond knows he's going to find it. Desmond wrote to another group of assassins, asking if they wanted him, and he left their letter on the desk. They want him, of course, and now he's been wondering what to do. If he were stronger, he would tell Shaun this instead of leaving it on his desk to see. If he were truly stronger, he'd tell Shaun he loves him instead of running away to prove he doesn't._

_"Des?" Shaun sounds confused and, Oh God, so hurt. Desmond sits on the side of the bed, but doesn't meet those blue eyes. He once spent a whole lazy afternoon trying to decide just what shade of blue they are, and it hurts that right now, he can't remember what he decided in the end. "Are you leaving?"_

_"I don't know. Maybe."_

_"Why?" This pleading is the last tone before he'll become defensive, then angry. Everyone else spurs him straight into anger; only Desmond can hurt him enough to find these new steps, new ways for him to hurt._

_"I haven't decided yet."_

_"But why would you?"_

_"Just- because, I just. I want to." He wishes he weren't this weak, because it's hurting Shaun, it's hurting him. It's hurting Shaun, and that tears and rips at him, drawing blood and making him scream inside, because he's hurting Shaun._

_"Why? You never told me you-" Shaun suddenly goes silent and before he looks angry, Desmond sees so much hurt it kills him, threatens to make his heart just stop, give out from all this pain and just stop. "Were you going to?"_

_"I don't know." It's like tearing his heart out, slowly, every nerve screaming at him to stop, stop before he kills himself, stop before he lives through this and the pain never goes away. "Shaun, I just- I don't- I can't." He doesn't know what he's trying to say. He can't keep doing this, can't keep loving him and pretending he doesn't, can't keep feeling like he's going to lose Shaun and all this hurt will have been for nothing. He keeps wondering, wondering if he could get this from someone else, someone the world wouldn't hate him for, and he can't keep living with this doubt._

_"Can't what?" Shaun dares, glaring. Desmond looks at the floor, heartbeat hammering in his ears._

_"With- with you, I just can't-"_

_"So don't. If you always know, why'd you ever start this?" he snaps, and Desmond says nothing. Shaun started this, kissed him first. Desmond used to feel wildly grateful, before he realized he was scared to death._

_"It's too fucking hard, okay?" he snarls, and Shaun doesn't say anything, nothing at all, as Desmond just keeps destroying his own heart, "this- it's all too hard! I don't want to be different, I liked when everything was easy and didn't hurt all the time, and it's too hard, and it's not fucking worth it!" Shaun hears what Desmond doesn't say, of course he does, he always does- you're not worth this. Desmond hears it too, because suddenly there's silence, even his heartbeat has stopped pounding, he can't hear it anymore._

_"So go," Shaun says, "let them use your memories. That's all you've got now."_

_Now Desmond sees his beating heart, going away, and Shaun slams the door on the way out, the sound echoing in the emptiness._

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Friday morning, Desmond wakes up in the extra bedroom, which is really just an office with a mattress on the floor. Desmond had been surprised that Shaun had moved back in here when Desmond left them, and Desmond refuses to make anything of it. When Desmond returned, Lucy and Rebecca made Shaun move back to the room he used to share with Desmond. It's unsettling, being here, but in the wrong room. This is Shaun's old room, his from the time before he joined Desmond, and Desmond used to sneak in here to kiss him. It was always dark, silence from down the hallway, and Shaun would let him crawl under the covers and Desmond would kiss him until he fell asleep. It's fitting, that he'd dream of their fight, the day Desmond decided to leave, or as close as he can figure. No matter when it was that he decided to leave, it was that day when he was gone.

He lies to Rebecca, says he needs to go back to an even earlier memory to find some piece of information, but all he wants is to again hear Leonardo back when he sounded like Shaun used to.

In Venezia, it's stormy and cold, wind rattling through the alleyways and hounding the ocean water. Ezio is in Leonardo's bed, warm and half asleep with the world's most brilliant artist wrapped in his arms.

"Ezio," Leonardo nuzzles against him, so warm against the early morning cold, this time before the sunrise where chill seeps into everything, "do you think it's safe?"

"Is what safe?" Ezio loops Leonardo's curls around his fingers, kisses the tip of Leonardo's nose. There are fourteen freckles across the bridge of Leonardo's nose, Ezio has counted so many times.

"The little bird," Leonardo says. Yesterday, he got one of the caged bird at the market, freed it into the forever blue sky.

"Of course, caro mio," Ezio promises, "birds keep themselves safe. They are delicate, sì, but smart."

"I was worried," Leonardo confesses, like Ezio doesn't already know.

"The bird is safe, amore mio, like you. Mio piccolo uccellino."

The scene fades away, the sound of the rain the last thing to go and the first thing Desmond hears again. It ticks against the glass like thrown jewels, little bits of diamonds that cover the world until they're swept away.

"Get what you needed?" Rebecca asks Desmond.

"Yeah." It almost hurts more than it helps now, because he's back near Shaun. Rebecca shuts off the Animus, and her movements are slow, thoughtful.

"I'm glad you're back with us," she finally says, "I mean- it's horrible, what happened to your team- but I- we all missed you."

Something about fate is horrible and twisted, that this tragedy brought him back here, that Belle's death and Felicity's desertion brought him to Shaun again, that Shaun still won't even look at him. It's the same fate that gave him a heart in the form of someone else. Desmond lives with this gaping emptiness in his chest, pain that refuses to let him die, because he was given a heart he could breathe without. He couldn't live without it, not really, but he didn't realize that until he cut out his beating heart and forced himself to keep existing.

It always felt so dangerous, that his heart was someone else, it used to make him feel so vulnerable. Used to, because Desmond can't really feel anymore. He tells himself it's better this way, that losing little things like intense emotions is better than losing everything, but it's getting harder to convince himself that losing his heart wasn't the worse thing in the world that he could have done to himself.

Fate is twisted. Desmond knows this now, because he did all this to himself. There is no one to blame but himself, and all through this, his heart keeps beating, so far away from him.


	2. Chapter 2

Tuesday morning, Desmond comes across the memory that tells him that the time he's been living on is over.

Ezio had been proud of his extensive planning in this assassination. He'd planned on being caught and led to the leader, and knows exactly how to break free and complete his assassination, know his plan down to the last step and dodge.

He hadn't known he would find himself almost incapable of moving at all.

"I knew we would catch you in the end," the man is saying, sneering down at Ezio. The assassin was tied up and shoved to his knees, and his gaze is downcast to the floor as he calculates when to cut the ropes binding his wrists together and plunge his dagger through the neck of the man ranting before him. "I knew we would. Do you want to know how I knew?" Ezio bites back a response, waits as the man stops his stroll about the room and stands before him. "You weakness, assassino."

"My weakness?" Ezio spits out when the man waits for an answer.

"Sì, sì. Do you know what this is?"

Ezio can't honestly think of anything; he's been thorough in his training and excruciatingly careful in everything he does. He has left nothing unguarded; it would jeopardize everything.

"No? How curious, for this gives us such  _control_ over you." He has taken a few steps away, and Ezio knows he will come back, and every muscle is tensed for when he does. "We know who you use for weaponry and medicine. We could, very easily, take out these people, one by one." Ezio says nothing; this does not surprise him, nor worry him. He has taken care in this aspect as well; he only associates with people who can protect themselves. "Or," the man goes on, takes a few steps closer, "we could torture your lover, Leonardo." Ezio chokes involuntarily, all the breath ripped from his body. The man smirks. "Ah, you remember this weakness now, do you?" Ezio could barely hear him through a haze of angry terror, and it was with only a second to spare that Ezio slashed through the ropes and drove the dagger through the man's neck.

 _They know,_ Ezio thought, numb with staggering fear as he sprinted away from the building, scrambling across rooftops,  _they know about Leo, they'll hurt him, what if they hurt him?_ He spots Leonardo's workshop, but stops.  _I can't,_ he thinks, pain in every breath now, every heartbeat,  _I can't go near him, they'll find him, they'll hurt him._ He forces himself to turn away, even as every nerve screams in protest, every instinct craving to run to Leonardo, pull him close and hold him tight and promise him, promise him he'll be safe. Going to him, though, Ezio knows, would only endanger Leonardo more. Protecting Leonardo has never hurt more, never felt more like he's broken his own heart.

When Desmond is finally pulled out of the memory, he knows exactly what he has experienced.

"Anything particularly important?" Rebecca asks as she shuts off the Animus.

"No," Desmond lies, because he can't tell her,  _this is what will break them,_ he can't. He feels it with a certainty he could never express; this is why, years from when this memory took place, this is why Leonardo and Ezio will die apart.

 

Sometimes Desmond wonders how long he can survive under the weight of guilt. He blamed himself for what happened with Shaun- it was destruction, it ruined him and he would give anything for it to have left Shaun untouched. He left not knowing, left hoping he didn't completely devastate Shaun after spending so long coaxing him into letting down his guard. Desmond left to escape, to let Shaun find someone who could own up to being with him, to flee the pressure that he'd been drowning under. He fled guilt, only to stumble back three years later, having only succeeded in causing more pain to others.

Desmond can't sleep well anymore; when he's not reliving his fight with Shaun, he's seeing his last team. It's when he has nightmares about their screaming, about blood staining Belle's blonde hair and blood smeared across Felicity's tan face, that he feels as if he's breathing guilt, choking on it. He always wakes up gasping and coughing, breathing hard and leaden with panic. He never tries to go back to sleep; it's cowardice, of course it is, but he's terrified of what he'd see if he dared reenter. Tonight, he suffers through Ezio's memory again, the decision to leave Leonardo to protect him, the decision that will destroy them, and then he hears the screaming and can feel the fire that threatens to devour them all. This time it does, destroys everything until all that is left is blackness, an empty void, and all there is in the world is the screaming.

It's five-thirty when Lucy finds him awake, and from her lack of surprise, Desmond only wonders how long she's known. She sits at the kitchen table across from him, pushes closed the lid of the laptop, shutting off the database entries he's been skimming for the past hour and a half.

"I'm worried," she says, and he looks away. Her light blue eyes are piercing, so pale they almost don't have a color, not like Shaun's at all, which are so dark it's like all the depth of the ocean. Both seem to be able to see through him; only Shaun ever could, but not enough, never enough.

"You don't have to be," Desmond says, hears the lie this is. It's getting harder to recognize them, it's all he can say now.

"Sure, I don't have to be. But can you really blame me?" He almost flinches at the mention of blame, almost. The inquisitive look on Lucy's face softens. "We've been sort of waiting for you to explain why you came back. And – we don't know why you left, either." Desmond hates conversations like this, where the cold stillness of the early morning could deceive him into believing he's safe, into thinking that, somehow, he's somewhere else now, that he can move on.

"They found my team," he says, tries to block out all the memories that threaten to attack at even these words. "We were doing what you guys do here, basically. They'd stolen an Animus, improved it, and were trying to find more of the technology."

"Did they get caught at the labs?"

"No." The irony of it had been like the final blow. "Tracked the signal of their stolen computer systems." For three years, everything had been a race. They'd been tripping over themselves to stay ahead of the Templars, keeping ahead of their technology, their tracking, their securities, but somehow, in all the franticness and direness, the team of assassins had fallen behind all at once.

"Did they-"

"They killed Belle and Felicity," Desmond says, and anything else he was going to say falls into silence. Just their names have conjured up so much- Belle's boundless sense of humor and emerald eyes, ( _Desmond, you're just too strict with holidays- sure, Cinco de Mayo was yesterday, but we celebrated today because it's Cinco de Sixo!),_  Felicity's auburn curls and play with languages,  _(Amore mio, of course I know you don't like girls, gracias, for all the credit you're giving me here. Tu vois? I'm not so unobservant, but, ich liebe dich, schatz, it's okay)_ \- and he doesn't want to allow any more loose. He spent almost more time with them than Lucy and Rebecca and Shaun, they were like sisters to him, giggling and startling him with their brilliance at every turn. Belle was like his baby sister, bright-eyed and overflowing with enthusiasm, Felicity like his older sister, with wise eyes and a calm smile. Losing them was losing his whole family; it feels like he found them only to have something more to lose after he destroyed his whole world.

"I'm sorry," Lucy murmurs, but she doesn't ask anything else. Desmond doesn't know how he could have asked her for this, and he's grateful she's realized on her own that he doesn't want to talk about the two assassins the world lost. "Why did you leave?" she asks instead, and he almost wishes she would have continued along their last track instead, however painful it was. Nothing hurts Desmond more than how he hurt Shaun. This is the danger with having his heart apart from him- it's so easy to lash out, to destroy and destroy, and never realized until later that he's hurting himself, so badly, suffering through a death he has to live through.

"It doesn't matter." He stands, walks away, and he's at the doorway of the kitchen before Lucy speaks.

"Shaun said you left to get away from him," she says softly, "I have a hard time believing that, Desmond. I saw you with him, before. I can't believe that." Her voice is almost pleading, but Desmond can offer her nothing.

"You should," he snaps back, can't look at her because he knows there'll be sympathy on her face, one of many things he doesn't deserve, "that's exactly why I left."

 _Of course,_ he thinks, when he sees Shaun in the hallway, deliberately avoiding Desmond's eyes, _doesn't this just figure?_ It feels so much like fate's hurting him every day, in this horribly twisted way. All it has to do is wait for Desmond to hurt Shaun, and Desmond will break himself down, little by little, until he has nothing left.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Two days later, Desmond lets guilt rear its head within him, and he asks Rebecca to let him revisit a memory.

Ezio is sprinting away across the rooftops, dangerously unbalanced as his fear continues to run rampant through him.  _They know, they know about Leo, they'll hurt him, what if they hurt him?_ He finally reaches Leonardo's workshop, stops and just looks at the door.  _I can't, I can't go near him, they'll find him, they'll hurt him._

And then, against every instinct and will, Ezio enters the workshop.

Desmond sees  _[desyncrhonization imminent]_ flash across his vision, and then, as Ezio envelopes Leonardo in his arms, the flashing words disappear.

"Caro mio, what is it?" Leonardo lets Ezio cling to him tightly, kiss the top of his head and hold him tight.

"They know about you," Ezio says, sounds so broken, "they're going to use you to get at me." Leonardo says nothing, but his blue eyes show only an understanding that fills Ezio with a calmness he can't remember feeling in a long time, so long. "I won't let them, I won't," Ezio whispers, running his thumb down Leonardo's jaw gently, "I promise you."

"Ezio… are you sure you even want such a vulnerability?" Leonardo asks, and it's the honesty in his question that makes Ezio certain.

"All this- you are worth all this, Leo, you are worth anything the world can throw at me." Ezio dips his head to kiss Leonardo softly, as if to breathe life into his promise. "I'll protect you. I will."

"I never doubted it," Leonardo whispers.

Desmond leaves the memory, and when he returns to the present, it becomes obvious why he was instructed never to change memories. It doesn't matter that what happened originally was wrong; the world settled onto that wrong axis and continued on from there.

The present time Desmond returns to is not the one he left behind.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Desmond is faced with is a map of the city. It's tacked to the wall, crisscrossed with red string and stuck with pins, some areas circled in blue ink, some with multiple red circles.

"Where did that come from?" This comment earns Desmond only a confused look from Rebecca. She chooses to ignore this question, returning to a mess of papers splayed out on the desk and floor. "What're you doing?" Desmond stands, still feels dizzy from the differences that seem to be lurking everywhere. Lucy's computer is pushed to the side of the desk, there's a shade drawn over the big window, and across the room, half of Shaun's bulletin board is covered with diagrams and long, scrawled words, what looks like a study of DNA and electronics.

"You all right?" Rebecca glances up when she notices Desmond is still standing there, staring.

"I- uh-" he shakes his head, turns away. "Fine. How's all this going?" he waves a hand over the spread of papers, as if he knows exactly what she's doing. Rebecca heaves a sigh, sits back on her heels.

"It's not working. I just- if only I could reformat it without them finding out, then it'd be fine. I just want to kick myself for not thinking of this before they learned to track signals!" She bites her lip, grey-blue eyes scanning over the papers. Numbers turn into nucleic acids and back again, spilling across pages and cramped into every available white space.

 _Track signals?_ Desmond feels panic start to well up inside him; if he had a heart, it would be beating so fast, he'd feel frantic.

"I just need to find a way to do it without them knowing. And another team- they almost had it, this morning! They were so close, and then Abstergo got there." She sighs again, sad look on her face, "lost them too." She bends back over the papers, starting to write again.

Desmond can't understand; before entering the last memory, this franticness had not been present. Abstergo can't find them so easily- at least, he realizes, this used to be the case, because now everything has changed. He leaves Rebecca to work in peace and goes to find Lucy. A search of the warehouse turns up only Shaun, who Desmond finds in the kitchen, clicking through pages on a laptop. Desmond lingers in the doorway, hesitant as he always is.

"Can I ask you something?" he finally ventures. Shaun doesn't look up, keeps those stormy blue eyes fixed on the screen. Clearly, his history with Shaun was left untouched. If anything had to change, Desmond half wished it would be what happened between them, but he realized now that erasing what they had, if he'd been left with memories that didn't really happen, it would kill him.

"If you absolutely must." Every time he says anything, he makes Desmond miss the way they were even more. He misses the way Shaun laughed and the way his voice got soft and low when he wanted to be serious and romantic and the way he talked fast when he was excited. Desmond misses everything, and just keeps finding more things he's lost. When he left, he knew he was losing Shaun; he didn't realize this meant everything, meant losing Shaun and losing his smile, his light-fingered touch, his sleepy kisses in the morning, his even breathing at night, his happiness, and that hurts so much, knowing he lost Shaun's happiness for him.

"Why- uh- how is it, that Abstergo can track us now?" Desmond hopes this makes sense, and when Shaun gives him an irritated look, he assumes it's common knowledge. Shaun presses a few buttons on the keyboard and then points to the doorway.

"History of Templar intel on the assassins is printing in the office," he says sharply, and Desmond mumbles a thank you before going to retrieve it.

The database entry tells Desmond that somehow, his meddling managed to change the entire power balance between the Templars and Assassins. Centuries ago, the Templars got a hold of the names of Assassin leaders, and ever since then, they've had information coming in about the Assassin's movements and team locations. They found out who to watch from the beginning. In the past year, Desmond reads, Abstergo learned to track signals from Animus technology, using the signals to read the genetic coding. Once the coding was obtained, they could access the same memories, receive the same information and training.

It's only when Desmond reads the paragraph Shaun wrote about the origins of Templar Intel that the changes in the present hit home.

_Templars received their first insight into the Assassin's organization during the Italian Renaissance. Renown assassin Ezio Auditore was forced to divulge the names of assassin leaders, when Templars threatened to torture and kill his lover, Leonardo Da Vinci._

Shaun knew. All along, Shaun has known exactly what Desmond has been trying to keep from him. He knew, and must have hoped for him and Desmond to have the same success together. Desmond feels this with a certainty that would have broken his heart, if he'd still had it. Knowing about Ezio and Leonardo would have given Shaun hope, because it had given Desmond hope, too, so long ago.

He returns to the kitchen, still shaken and numb, and Shaun looks up at his footsteps. Concern flashes across his face for an instant before he looks guarded again; it's moments like this that tell Desmond, so painfully clearly, that Shaun was hurt deeply. He still remembers what it was like when they were together, he still reads Desmond so easily, and caring is still as instinctive for him as it is for Desmond, no matter how hard he fights it. Desmond tries to find some way to ask Shaun how he found out, if it made their failure hurt worse because he knew they could have done it, if he hates Desmond even more for not telling him, but Desmond can't find those words.

"Where's Lucy?" he asks instead. Shaun looks at him with blatant confusion.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" He looks genuinely worried for a moment, and again, it vanishes, hidden away. Desmond looks down at the database print in his hand.

"Look, I'm just asking, okay? Because she was here before I went into the memory, and now she isn't." Even as he says this, Shaun is shaking his head no, confusion in his eyes.

"Lucy's dead," he says quietly, finally meeting Desmond's gaze, "did you lose all memories of the last two months?"

" _She's dead?"_  Desmond chokes out, and something inside him shatters. Not his heart, it's gone, so far gone, but maybe this is like having the phantom feeling of still having one, just to feel more pain. "Lucy's dead?"

"What's  _wrong_  with you?" Shaun snaps back, and Desmond is speechless, floored by the realization of what has happened.

He killed her- he changed history, can't change it back, and somewhere in the process, Lucy was lost.

"It's my fault," he whispers, that same phantom, nonexistent something in him curling in on itself and dying, screaming and howling, "I can't- I didn't know-"

"What are you  _talking_  about?" Shaun's tone quavers between irritation and concern, and it hurts Desmond that he's fighting worrying. He wants Shaun to hate him, doesn't want Shaun to have to live with the deliberating, the doubting.

"She was here- before I went back into the same memory, she was, and then I-"

"Desmond," Shaun growls, "what the hell did you do?"

"I changed something," Desmond confesses. He leans back against the doorframe, looks down at the datasheet prints in his hands, detailing the history he caused, none of the history he ruined, lost, because he changed it to this terrible variation. "Originally- originally, an assassination target told Ezio they knew about Leonardo and him, and Ezio refused to be with Leonardo anymore, to protect him." He knows the only reason he's telling Shaun this is because he used to tell Shaun almost everything, because the things he didn't tell Shaun are guilting him into confessing this, as if this confession can make up for all that he hid. "And- then I went back, again, and changed it. It wasn't wrong, because there was no de-synch, it just went along like that. Instead of leaving, Ezio stayed with Leonardo, and then- I guess that's why, later, they got that information out of him- and now they- they can track us-"

"Why?" Shaun snaps, those dark blue eyes welled with fury. He shoves back from the table, but he doesn't come near Desmond, stays on the other side of the room. "What would possess you to do that, Desmond? You know you aren't supposed to change anything!"

"I couldn't leave it like that!" Desmond protests, almost pleading, angry begging born of this desperation he can't leave behind him, can't leave anything because he keeps destroying all the past there is, "I hated seeing that happen to them, I just couldn't!"

 _"So now that sort of tragedy bothers you?"_ Shaun snarls, and there's so much hurt on his face that Desmond just wants to collapse, fall to his knees and beg his forgiveness, beg for the chance to apologize, to do anything to stop all the pain they share.

 _It killed me, when it happened to us,_ Desmond wants to cry, beg Shaun to understand,  _I've ruined the whole world, but that's the worst thing I ever did. I can't even bear to relive it in my nightmares, because it killed me, it kills me every day. That's why I hated seeing it happen to them, I know how much it hurts._

Shaun stalks out of the kitchen, slams the door, and the sound echoes and echoes.

 

Desmond is allowed to escape into the Animus while Rebecca continues to search for a way to reformat under Abstergo's radar, and in the memory, the same panic is present, but tempered by a breath of relief.

Ezio pulls Leonardo across many adjoining rooftops, breathless with the need to get him as far away from  _them_ as manageable. He stops when the building is no longer in sight behind them, and pulls Leonardo to him to ensure himself again that the artist isn't injured in any way. Leonardo is still wide-eyed and trembling; he'll be terrified of being recaptured by the Templars for so long, Ezio has no hope of curing him of this.

"I'm so sorry, caro mio," Ezio whispers, holding Leonardo tight in his arms, kissing his curls. "Oh, Leo, if they'd hurt you-" he feels like he's going to break, he's been keeping himself together since they told him  _we have Leonardo,_ and now that Leonardo is safe in his arms, safe until they find him next, it's too much.

"They didn't," Leonardo promises again, "they didn't do anything to me." They did scare him, though, this is so obvious in the way he breathes in gasps and holds Ezio so tightly, as if scared they're going to rip him away from the assassin again.

"If you weren't with me-" Ezio mumbles against Leonardo's curls, but he's said this so many times, and he's never, never meant it. He would die without Leonardo. He wakes up in a panic sometimes, nightmares about having given up on all this, and Leonardo whispers him back to sleep, promises that never happened, never will.

"I don't care, you  _know_ this," Leonardo insists, "I'm not losing you. This, this is still living. Without you, how could I ever live?"

"I wish this didn't affect you." Ezio always wishes for this, that they would never try to harm Leonardo, just to hurt the assassin he is so connected to.

"Amore mio, it can't be helped. When you're close to someone, the same things affect you, always." Leonardo is always able to make this sound bearable, almost expected, but Ezio can never justify that the Templars have come  _so close_ to laying a hand on Leonardo. This keeps Ezio angry, alert, because he's never going to let them, never.

"Still-" Ezio whispers.

"Ezio, I knew being with you would have unique challenges," Leonardo says, "I always knew. I've never cared." Ezio sighs out a breath, dips his head to kiss Leonardo.

"You save me, Leo." He can't say anything else, but Leonardo knows.

Leaving the memory behind always makes Desmond wistful, missing what was never his. That evening, Rebecca finds Desmond, jumping over the arm of the couch to bounce down next to where he's sitting, her eyes bright with an idea. "I know how we could have reformatted it," she says, and he tries to summon up matching enthusiasm. "See, the thing with the Animus is that you only get to try and read the memories once, it's a security precaution Abstergo set up. That way, if someone tried to hack in and use computer code, not genetic, it would lock down permanently. If we used tRNA instead of DNA-"

"That's great," Desmond says dully, "but we didn't do that."

"I know, I know, but listen!" She smacks him in the arm to gain his attention, "if we could go back and do it again, we could have done that!"

"We can't."

"We can, we can!" She beams at him, suddenly even brighter, "you can relive your own memories!"

"You can do that?"

"Well, sort of. It's a little different." She settles down cross-legged on the cushion, still humming with excitement, "See, the difference is, because it's your own memory, it's not a genetic record, it's a recollection. You can jump straight to the important memories of Ezio- the big, important things he would have remembered, like the day he became an assassin- but to get to the little memories in between, you have to work up to them- those are the things he forgot, insignificant things. But you can still get to them." She pauses for a breath, "with your own memories, it's the same concept, mostly. You can jump to the important memories. You just can't access the forgotten ones. All we have to do is find some important thing that happened before I coded the Animus, and you can go straight there, make sure I use tRNA instead of DNA, and that's it!"

"I have to relive my own memories?"

"Yeah! That way we could make it so that all this- all this would never have happened!"

"So what memory would I go back to? When?"

"Well," Rebecca pauses a moment, seems to be counting back, "it has to be something you remember really well, at least two hours, so you won't get halfway through and get thrown out because you forgot something. It can be two hours all at once, or an evening and a morning because sleep is like a connector, but it has to be continuous like that. We can't risk you getting thrown out of the memory before you can get the tRNA idea across. You'll have to live through what was important about the memory,  _and_ tell me to do tRNA instead."

"Okay. When?"

"Well, see, what I did was use the Animus as it was for a while, and then I re-coded it, to upgrade it. And right after that, Abstergo figured out how to track everything an Animus did, so I can't change anything after that happened, because they would know it."

"When did they learn to track?"

"Right after you left." Rebecca looks at him steadily, "what happened then that you committed to memory?"

"I can't," Desmond pleads, "not then, not that, I  _can't-"_

"It could change everything," Rebecca says softly, "please."

"But what I remember-" he can't finish, can't say it out loud.  _I remember tearing out my own heart. I remember leaving Shaun. I remember it because it hurt more than anything I'd ever known. I can't go back and die again, I can't._

"You'll do fine," she says gently, leaves the room without arguing further, because she knows, they both know. Desmond will do it, not only because it will save the assassins. He'll suffer through the memory of the morning he and Shaun fell apart because he remembers the night before just as clearly.

"You're going back to then?" Shaun's voice comes from behind him and Desmond turns to find him in the doorway, his face unreadable. Desmond just nods yes. "Can you even manage that?"

"What, you think you could do better?" This makes Shaun glare.

"Of course I couldn't."

"Why can't it be you that goes back?" Desmond asks, and Shaun looks away, bitter.

"Rebecca asked me first," he says, "it can't be me."

"Why not?"

" _Because,"_ Shaun snaps, " _I'd_  want to change what happened."

The world falls to pieces again, because Desmond never realized that he is Shaun's heart, the same way Shaun is his, because he never realized that Shaun thinks Desmond doesn't want him back.

"Can you even do this?" Shaun continues, and his glare doesn't lift, "You'd have to act just like you did then, that evening. If you went back and acted differently, you'd screw up the future again."  _If you went back and were as cruel to me as you are now,_ he's saying, because Desmond has always known what Shaun means to say even when he uses words that don't accomplish the task.

"I wouldn't go back and treat you differently than I did before," Desmond says, too tired to be anything but blunt, "everything will be fine."

He could never return to that time and hurt Shaun before their fight. Fighting with him  _again_ is going to be the hardest thing Desmond has ever had to force himself to do, because this time, he'll know what's going to happen. Some part of him wants to return to that evening before everything fell apart, hungers for it, because this might sustain him a little longer, even if it ends up killing him sooner.

Desmond could never hurt Shaun again. He'll return to their past and this time, he'll know to treasure every of those last moments with Shaun, because this time, Desmond will know what it's like to live without him. He couldn't hurt Shaun, not now that he knows what the rest of his life will be like without him. If anything, he'll just want to stay there forever, suspended in the time before he ruined everything.

Desmond misses the way it felt, living with a heart.


	4. Chapter 4

Desmond spends half the night trying to think of a way to get out of returning to his own memory, desperate for some sort of excuse he can offer to Rebecca.  _I can't, I don't really remember it. I can't, it's the wrong time frame. I can't, the Animus is broken. I can't, Shaun wants to do it. I can't, maybe you should._  Nothing he thinks of works; it doesn't even make sense to his exhaustion-riddled mind.

From two-fifteen AM onward, Desmond tries to convince himself he doesn't desperately want to return to that time. He stares up at the ceiling in the dark and tries to tell himself that he doesn't want to have that evening just one more time. He doesn't want to kiss Shaun again, to relearn the taste of his lips or scent of his skin, he doesn't want to feel Shaun's familiar and forgotten embrace, doesn't want to see the way he smiled, like Desmond was all he ever really wanted, like he thought he would be able to keep this, what they had.

It doesn't work, of course. He wants to hold Shaun just one more time, he wants just one last night with him, to memorize the way his heartbeat feels when they're lying in the dark together, just them in the world. When sunlight breaks into the room, Desmond has to accept that all he wants now is to have Shaun back, even in so artificial a way as to revisit their past. It doesn't matter, and this is what he's been reduced to, since losing Shaun, he will take anything, even this meaningless consolation, just to live another day without him.

Everything since losing Shaun has been like this, because Desmond never lost Shaun at all. They didn't drift apart and they didn't wander in opposite directions and he's not gone from the world. Desmond forcefully removed Shaun from his life; losing could never be so violent, so sure. What he did wasn't losing, it wasn't loss. It was a disaster, it was breaking, it felt like suicide. No matter what it is and was, Desmond can't help but look forward to the memory he will relive. It doesn't matter that this will only show him what he so completely destroyed, show him what he's missing, it doesn't matter, because even though Desmond didn't realize it at the time, he never felt more complete than when he was with Shaun.

By the time Rebecca has the memory read and loaded, Desmond's nerves are on edge with the anticipation.

"You ready?" she says, and he nods eagerly, still trying not to make it obvious that he's been looking forward to this for so long, looking forward to something like this since the day he got rid of all that mattered to him. "Remember," Rebecca says, tapping at keys as Desmond sits. He watches Shaun fiddle with something on the map. "Everything must stay the way it is now."

"Everything must be the way it's meant to be," Shaun calls over, "don't screw it all up again like last time," and then, Desmond is gone.

 

Desmond wakes up to Shaun's voice, coming from somewhere far away. He blinks and looks around; he's in bed, in the room he and Shaun used to share, and for a moment, he can't believe it, he just _can't_. He can't believe that this is where he was, three years ago, that he's ended up so far from here, that he's given up the right to wait for Shaun in bed like this, that he's strayed so painfully far from here, where he's supposed to be.

"I just don't understand," Shaun is saying from another room, "do willows even  _have_ a scent? You can't make a shampoo smell like something that doesn't have a scent." His meandering, almost playful tone makes Desmond want to cry; he lost this, he threw this away, how could he have given this up? Shaun appears in the doorway, dressed only in sweatpants, his hair still wet. He smiles, and crosses the room to climb onto the bed beside Desmond. "I don't know, I just don't get it." He nestles in next to Desmond, and this close he's shower-scented and his skin is a little damp. Desmond can't form a response, can't even make himself move.  _This was what every evening was like,_  he thinks, stunned into stillness,  _I lost this, I lost you like this._

"Hey." Shaun pushes himself up on one elbow, looks down at Desmond, "you okay?"

"I'm fine," Desmond manages. There's concern in Shaun's eyes, real, unhidden concern, Desmond forgot that it was ever there at all. "Just- I don't know. I, um." It hits him suddenly, so terribly, that nothing had to go wrong, that Shaun never was going to stop looking at him like this, that it  _didn't have to end_. Desmond feels like he's going to fall apart again, but this time, it'll stop, he'll reach an end, because there has to be somewhere where the pain can't get any worse.

It hurts so much more now, with Shaun here, still his, it hurts because he has his heart back, and he hasn't felt pain like this in such a long time.

"I don't know," he sighs out, voice shaking, "c'mere." He wraps Shaun into his arms, where Shaun just melts. He tilts his face up, studies Desmond with those deep blue eyes.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he says softly, and Desmond nods.  _For now,_  he thinks, biting his lip,  _at least until tomorrow morning._

"It's getting late," he says instead, gently takes Shaun's glasses off for him and sets them on the bedside table. Shaun blinks big blue eyes at him, looks a little younger, less serious. "Probably should sleep." Shaun reaches over him to snap off the light and then crawls under the blankets, on the other side of the bed. Desmond remembers how he started to do this near the end, not because he wanted to, because he thought Desmond wanted him to, and it hurts more now, this second time. Everything does. Desmond stares up at the ceiling in the dark for a moment, debating, but this is his last night with Shaun, one he wasn't really supposed to have at all, and wasting it would hurt so much. "Hey," he whispers, and Shaun turns towards him instantly, almost like he's been waiting for Desmond to say anything. Desmond wonders if he did this every night, waited for the words that never came, and he hates that he didn't wonder this sooner, soon enough to fix it. He can't find anything to say now, just reaches out for him. Shaun scoots over eagerly, settles back against Desmond's chest.

"Cold or something?" Shaun whispers, as Desmond slips an arm around him. "Nuh-uh." He kisses the back of Shaun's neck, breathes in and tries to memorize the way everything about this feels. "Just. Miss you."

"I haven't gone anywhere."

"I know."  _But I have. You will. I will._  Shaun turns onto his other side to face him, all eyes in the dark. Desmond couldn't say it, couldn't confess,  _I love you and I'm going to lose you and it's going to kill me and I love you so much,_  couldn't because he hadn't, because changing history would change the whole world again. It's the worst kind of divine punishment, that his inability to accept his own love for Shaun is going to hurt him all over again, because it's going to keep him from saying anything again. He just leans in and kisses Shaun, sweet and gentle, like he can somehow tell Shaun without saying anything at all that whatever happens tomorrow morning, when they have the fight Shaun doesn't yet know about, it will be a mistake.

"I'm sorry," Desmond whispers, and Shaun doesn't ask why. Maybe, Desmond thinks, he's been hurting Shaun for longer than he's thought, hurting him little by little by pretending not to want him, and he has more to be sorry for than he knows.

"It's okay," Shaun closes his eyes, sighs out a breath.

Desmond knows he's gone too far, that none of this happened. In the real past, this evening was spent with sparse conversation, a quick kiss, and nothing more, but he can't, not again. He can't let this evening go without finding something to live on for the rest of his life without Shaun.

"You happy with me?" Desmond asks carefully, "I mean... do you like... that we're together?"

"Yes," Shaun says, and Desmond's heart breaks for all that he's lost, all he never knew he had.

Desmond can't fall asleep. He closes his eyes and listens to Shaun's even breathing, and this hadn't happened in the real past either, because before Shaun falls asleep he murmurs  _I love you,_  and if Desmond had known that, he never could have said goodbye.

 _I never knew you loved me,_ he thinks, staring down at his sleeping once-lover, his lover just for tonight and never again,  _I just never knew._

Nearing one AM, Desmond reluctantly slips out of bed, leaving Shaun curled up alone in the middle of the mattress. He closes the bedroom door quietly behind him, then creeps into the room with the Animus. Scattered across Rebecca's desk are plans, just like she said there would be. Her instructions to him before entering this memory had been simple; all he needed to do was cross out "DNA" where she'd written it in her notes, write "tRNA" instead, because she'd see it and try it. Desmond uncaps a pen and stares down at the papers for a minute, at where Rebecca's spidery handwriting says  _pattern to DNA as coding for memories._ It seems too extraordinary, too unbelievable, that by changing just this paper, they might be saved. As he crosses out  _DNA_ and writes  _tRNA_ instead, he images that, somewhere far in the future, Lucy has reappeared and Abstergo is thrown back into the dark.

Inevitably, as he imagines this re-created future, he sees himself and Shaun the way they were in this memory's time. The way they are in the real future feels wrong, wrong in the same way Leonardo and Ezio were when they were apart. It feels wrong, but the world has gotten used to it, formed to fit this terrible wrongness, but this doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it bearable.

He tries to stop thinking about it, and returns to the bedroom. Shaun stirs when he crawls back into bed, reaches out for Desmond. Desmond hugs Shaun into his arms, blinks away tears he has been steadfast in his refusal to allow.

"You okay?" Shaun whispers sleepily, slipping a hand up under Desmond's shirt. "You've been…" he trails off, unable to describe it. The difference is too obvious to identify; Desmond knows what this means. He knows this is the last time he'll be with Shaun, he knows now, what this means.

"Don't worry," he murmurs, and Shaun just sighs, kisses him gently.

"If you say so." When he falls back asleep, head on Desmond's chest, nothing has ever felt more right. Desmond doesn't fall asleep, he can't, he wants to be awake for every second of this because it's everything he wants and gave up.

Rebecca had said, "everything must stay the way it is now." Now, Desmond remembers, starts to question, because Shaun said, "everything must be the way it's meant to be," told him not to make the same mistake as last time. Last time means last time he changed the past, Desmond tries to convince himself, but some part of him says  _what if it's the last time I was in this memory, when it was real?_ Desmond knows he's imagining things; it seems like Shaun was trying to tell him something.

Desmond can't keep from wondering for the rest of the night. He's wondering and debating and hoping more than he should as he listens to the foreign sound of his heartbeat, even as Shaun's breathing, the rise and fall of his chest as rhythmic as the heartbeat that was supposed to keep Desmond alive.

All night long, he hears his heartbeat.


	5. Chapter 5

"Desmond!" The frantic whisper penetrates Desmond's mind slowly, fighting through the hold of sleep. As he stirs, the sound of rain greets him, slacking off in its intensity against the windows. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" He blinks awake to find Rebecca all-but dancing next to the bed, holding a paper in her hand. A glance at the alarm clock tells him it's six AM; indecently early, in his opinion.

"It's too early for anything," he groans, but all she does is wave the paper at him.

"TRNA, Desmond! It's genius! Put that with the self-lockdown the Animus does, and we'll be safe forever!"

"Yeah, yeah, that's great, Rebecca, and it'll be even greater in a few hours."

"Your enthusiasm just kills me," Rebecca then smiles, "but I guess I can understand what you'd rather pay attention to." Her gaze drifts to the other side of the bed before she laughs and leaves. Desmond glances over, and the world goes dark and mournful. He woke up forgetting- this, here, where he is, this is a memory. This is the last time he has before he loses everything again. Beside him, Shaun is so warm and content, one hand splayed over Desmond's chest, curled up at his side so familiarly that Desmond hadn't realized this is just a memory, it tears Desmond's temporarily re-found heart to pieces.

It's terrible, how easy it was to forget. Shaun beside him felt so  _natural,_ it was effortless to forget that this hasn't been a reality in three years. That their three years apart felt less real than this distant memory.

"You sure you're okay?" Shaun says softly, meeting his eyes.

"Yeah. Fine. Sort of. Why?" Desmond stammers through an answer. Shaun shrugs.

"Just seem… nervous, I suppose." He looks back up. Desmond wonders how long that fear was in Shaun's eyes before this day, how long he had that flickering worry that this perfect togetherness they have was to be torn away from him. It hurts more, knowing he was right to worry.

"I'm fine," Desmond promises, kisses Shaun gently, and it sounds like a lie to the both of them, even tastes like one.

Three years ago, Desmond felt this same dread, watching Shaun wander around the room in the morning. Now, though, as Shaun nears the desk and starts searching for some paper of his, Desmond feels fear. Shaun hums a little as he flips through some papers, swipes his tongue over his fingertip to flick through the papers easier. Desmond watches, half wants to look away, to curl up under the blankets and sob for what he's about to lose, as Shaun pauses. This is why no one knows exactly when they'll die, he thinks, because it makes the end so much worse.

"Des?" That same bewildered tone, the edges of pain and panic. He looks back at Desmond, and Desmond remembers now. That entire afternoon spent thinking, and he ended up deciding that Shaun's eyes are blue like a deep lake, but only when reflecting pure white clouds overhead, a dark that's hazed over, unreadable, unfathomable, drawing him in, so beautiful it can't be real. "Are you leaving?"

"I don't know. Maybe." It makes Desmond's heartbeat start to race and then stutter, back and forth, like this time around, it can somehow tell what's about to happen.

"Why?" He's nearly begging, something no one else ever hears.

"I haven't decided yet." The words choke him, hot like struggling and icy like pain, and Shaun's eyes fill with hurt.

"But why would you?"

"Because this is hard."

He gets no further, not at all. Desmond knows what will come after this, he knows, but suddenly, he can't. He can't pretend this doesn't matter to him, that he doesn't now know Shaun only says  _I love you_  when he thinks Desmond is asleep, that the next years will hurt worse than anything he's ever felt, that this is going to tear his heart away from him. Desmond can't pretend it's not happening, because he feels with everything he is that he's meant to be with Shaun, that he can't get this from someone else. He knows now- he's been without Shaun for three years in the real world, and it's living without his heart.

"What if I screw up and lose you? All this, everything, it's worth it, but not if I don't have you anymore, I wanted to leave but- I don't, Shaun, I love you." Something breaks in him, maybe it's his heart, breaking even though he managed to hold onto it this time, and he starts to cry, tears he's held back for more than three years. Shaun is speechless for a heartbeat, a sound Desmond no longer recognizes, and then he crosses the room and wraps Desmond in his arms. Desmond sobs so hard he can't catch his breath, because this should have been the last time, and he's been without Shaun for so long he forgot how it felt, to hurt while he actually has a heart to feel it with.

"Desmond," Shaun gathers him in close, kisses his damp cheek, "I could never stop loving you."  _You will,_  Desmond thinks, but he can't tell Shaun this. He's already changing so much. "No matter what. Okay? Don't ever worry about that."

"Promise?" he whispers, and Shaun kisses him.

"I do promise. I love you."

In the real past, Shaun knew Desmond had destroyed himself, but this time, he doesn't know, he can't. In this memory, suspended away from reality, somewhere safe where all that pain can't touch them and last, Shaun doesn't know they're going to fall apart.

"I love you too," Desmond says softly, turning his face against Shaun's neck, wants to make him promise,  _remember this, no matter what. Remember this, that you're my heart even when I don't have it._ "Please," he pleads in a whisper, "remember this."

The world goes dark, the memory over, and Desmond clings to his last memory, swears he can hear Shaun's voice, somewhere between that changed past and the real one.

_I'll remember._

He won't, though. That's what hurts, in the last moments that Desmond has his heart, hurts more than anything.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

It's night-dark when Desmond emerges from the memory, not morning-dark like when he woke up to change everything.

"It worked perfectly," Rebecca says from next to him, shutting down the Animus for the night. "Abstergo can't track us, Lucy survived because she never got caught, we're better than where we used to be!"

"Does she know-"

"Nope."

"Oh." He hesitates, looks around for Shaun but he's nowhere to be seen. "Did anything else-"

"Changes only stick if you're both aware. I told you to change my notes, and Lucy wasn't alive in that present. I don't fully understand it, but it's because it's harder to change your own future. If you share a certain percentage of memories with someone, you can't change your future together unless you both know about it."

"Oh." There's just silence, he can't hear even his own heartbeat, but he left that behind. He failed to save it. "Are you sure?" Rebecca just looks away;  _go see for yourself,_ the mournful silence says, because saying it would hurt her, too. It hurts anyone around, like some natural disaster that doesn't seem to fit into the natural order but does anyways, forcing itself in and breaking anything it touches.

Hope is like a virus in its persistence, spreading and consuming, because some part of Desmond refuses to believe that nothing has changed, and the hope is killing him. Desmond finds Shaun reading at the kitchen table; as he watches in silence, Shaun licks a fingertip and flips the page, and it gives Desmond a sinking feeling, like what it felt if his heart had lurched, like he can feel that like the memory left the ghost of his heart within his chest.

"Shaun?" he says unsteadily, and then those blue eyes meet his, no recognition of what he's trying to say. "Do you remember-" he starts, but can't make himself say it,  _do you remember that I promised I'd always love you?_ He doesn't have to; the  _no_ is so plain in those blue eyes, blue like sky-reflecting water. "Would you have changed anything?" he asks instead. Shaun shrugs, looks away.

"I wouldn't have been able to."

"Because you didn't want to?"

"Because I'm not the one who did anything," Shaun corrects harshly, resentment fringing his tone, "I can't change what I couldn't save the first time around, can I?" he draws in a breath sharply, and again, Desmond is hurt by the exact same realization. Only someone that loved him and maybe, if fate is cruel enough, still does love him, could find this much anger, could hate him this much. "What, did you actually try?" Shaun snaps, and Desmond recoils, cringes.

"Yeah," Desmond says quietly, "tried." He slips out of the kitchen and ends up in his room, somewhere that feels so wrong, because this morning, he woke up in the room they used to share. The morning he woke up to felt more real than what's truly happening, more right, but farther away than anything in the world now.

In the silence, Desmond can just barely hear his heartbeat, so faint and so weak, but he can still hear it.


	6. Chapter 6

Lucy doesn't understand why her teammates are constantly staring at her with expressions of disbelief, even thankfulness. She doesn't remember that, in another past, she died, died painfully. She doesn't understand, but she accepts Rebecca's explanation of, "another assassin tried to do a mission like yours, and she didn't make it, we're just glad you're here."

Shaun is not so easy to fool. He knows Desmond went back to thrash through a memory they share, to change what was already altered. He pretends not to notice that Desmond sneaks glances at him, thoughtful and hesitant. He acts as if he doesn't hear the indecision in Desmond's voice when he speaks, dozens of starts to what he wants to say, all of which end up as pointless things he doesn't need to say. Shaun knows, of course he knows, that Desmond saw something, maybe felt something, that made everything just a shade different, but tries to hide the fact that he knows Desmond needs to tell him something. Shaun is not easy to fool, but, again, neither is Desmond. He forgets Desmond used to know him, knows when he's hiding something and when he knows something and when he's wondering something.

Shaun knows something happened, and he can't hide this fact from Desmond no matter how desperately he tries. All he can conceal is why he's hiding this, why he cares to wonder; as it is, this is all Desmond wants to know.

Saturday is cold and rainy; it feels like this has been all the world can offer for so long, like everything else melted away and left this cold rain in its wake to stay forever. Shaun is rearranging the bulletin board and Desmond is sprawled on the couch, supposed to be reading database entries. Instead, he's trying not to remember the way it felt, safe and warm in bed with Shaun, trying not to remember beacuse he knows it's going to tempt him, torture him, tear him into pieces. His attention flickers to the screen of the laptop that sits on the table before him, and away again; both are equally dangerous in their tempting nature's magnitude, threatening to draw him into whatever world they offer. He can drown in the memory of how it felt, Shaun wrapped in his arms, or he can run from it, drown himself in denial.

Onscreen, the email is minimized, but he's read it so many times, the words have burned themselves into the screen, into his mind, and even deeper into his past, torturing him with their parallel.

"Desmond?" Lucy's voice is nothing out of the ordinary to him; he never lived through those months after her death like the other two, his only past was the one where she was always alive. Rebecca has told him, though, that seeing Lucy still makes her freeze and gape in awe sometimes, as the present shocks her a little more, jolts her into realizing precisely where they are at this very moment.

"Coming." Desmond shuts the laptop, follows her to the Animus.

One thing that has never changed and never could is that it's so much easier to borrow Ezio's memories. He used to think that it's because pain is dulled when it's not his own, but that's not true, because Shaun's pain hurts Desmond even more than his own does. It's easier because it's over, because whatever could happen already has, because he knows Ezio lived through what's happening. It's that promise of survival that makes it so much easier.

It would be easier, this struggle to live without Shaun, this slow-motion dying, if only he knew what he has to look forward to, to dread.

Ezio is calculating his next move as he watches his target, a man whose talking gives Ezio the luxury of planning how to assassinate him with excruciating detail. "Strange, that an assassin would make himself such an easy target," the man stands across the room; targets think themselves safe, at this sort of distance.

"You must be mistaking me for another," Ezio calls over; behind his back, he feels for the mechanisms on the pistol built into his bracer, hands moving silently. "I'm no easy target."

"Ah?" The man laughs, not the nervous sound of a man cornered. "And yet, it would be such an easy task, killing your lover. Leonardo, isn't it?"

His laugh is cut off when the bullet hits its mark; that icy dread travels through Ezio faster than any bullet cold cut through air, though.

This time, there is no hesitation and no doubt. He could no more leave Leonardo than he could bring his assassination targets back to life. Leonardo always knows when a threat has been made against them; he knows, from Ezio's embrace and his silence, Leonardo always knows.

"It'll be fine," Leonardo promises, again, this routine so well-worn, it delivers a comfort that holds no water.

"I'll make sure of it," Ezio always says this; the first few times, Leonardo would be trembling in his arms, understandably terrified of assassins he could neither identify nor stop. Now, though, now that they've been together three years, he fears nothing. He's learned to trust Ezio's promise. Ezio can feel the comfort in this occurrence, like well-worn cloth between his fingers, but tonight, something beyond beckons him, promising real comfort. "I almost didn't," he says, and Leonardo blinks up at him.

"Didn't?"

"Didn't... didn't stay with you. The first time a target said they knew about you, I almost decided to leave you, just so you'd stay safe. So... so I wouldn't be so vulnerable to them, too." He traces a fingertip down Leonardo's jaw, tries to read the expression in those blue eyes. He never can. It's other clues that tell Ezio what Leonardo's always thinking. "Almost. But I couldn't do it. I thought... whatever suffering came of it, it'd be worth it."

"Has it?" Leonardo asks. Ezio smiles.

"You're worth everything we've gone through and more, amore mio."

These words echo in Desmond's mind for hours to come. They're exactly what he wishes he could have told Shaun, that all the indecision and difficulty was worth it, just to be with him, but Desmond never got to that point. He wasn't strong enough to earn the right to those words.

And now, all Shaun has heard is the painful evidence, that he isn't worth what they would have had to go through.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The common advice to "sleep on it" has never made any sense to Desmond. He shuts down his computer for the night and collapses in bed, but the email refuses to leave his mind, to even allow him to sleep. It's the parallel that makes him cringe and hesitate, the differences that make it tempting, dangerously so.

Another team of assassins, one he met while with Belle and Felicity, contacted him, asking him to join their team. It's the same, still means the same to him, this escape, this offer of a life without Shaun. It must mean something, that he's still important enough to change the meaning of everything, but Desmond refuses to examine that any further than strictly necessary.

The differences, though. These are what is keeping him awake, cold in bed without Shaun beside him. This time, he's not leaving anything. This time, he'd be finding the same thing, just easier. The assassin who contacted him is Eva, and when they'd met, he'd known that it would be easy, deceptively natural, for them to end up together. This time, he's being offered what appears to be exactly what he left, just easier. There would be all the love Shaun had for him, but without the hiding, without hearing that never-ending hiss in his mind, what you're doing is wrong, without feeling like he's making the same mistake over and over again, the same one that lost him so much already. It added insult to injury, that doing this sort of thing lost him his family and his home, but refusing to do it lost him the man he loves.

Everything is losing, but Desmond still cannot deny the obvious. Losing what seemed like everything didn't hurt nearly as much as losing Shaun; he still had his heart. After he refused to be with Shaun, his heart was gone.

Earlier that evening, Rebecca had asked him, "why  _did_ you leave Shaun?"

"I thought I could live without him," Desmond had said.

"Why did you come back?"

"Obviously I was wrong about that."

He hasn't told Shaun this; it doesn't seem important, because this is just another addition to a painfully long list of things Desmond has never told Shaun and likely never will, if this is how their future will stay, no future at all. Shaun doesn't know why Desmond used to wonder if he could find the same with someone else, someone other people could accept. Shaun doesn't know that Desmond ended up as a bartender because he didn't make it out college, because after his parents found out more about their son, they stopped funding his tuition, stopped claiming him as theirs. He doesn't know that abandoning Desmond was the only thing his parents ever agreed on.

Desmond knows it's not fair to Shaun, to keep all this from him, but Desmond used to think that nothing was fair, and that a little more unfairness wouldn't hurt. Since then, the most blatant act of fairness is the way Shaun won't speak to him anymore; Desmond feels he's never deserved anything more.

Moonlight spills across the room, so slowly it isn't moving at all. Desmond tries to stop thinking, to give up and sleep, but before he can, he realizes that he's wrong. Before that act of cruel fairness, there was one other that the world offered to him. It felt fair- more than that, it felt  _right-_ when Shaun loved him back.

Everything has lost him something.

Desmond takes his laptop from the beside table and replies to the email before shutting the computer back down, his decision irrevocably made.

The sound of his heartbeat is hauntingly familiar. He falls asleep to its distant lullaby.


	7. Chapter 7

_When Desmond comes back from his own memory in the Animus, it feels like maybe, he's so lucky he never left. Shaun comes over to him, smiles at him and the fact that this breaks Desmond's heart means he managed to save it and bring it back with him after all. He wonders if he ever even left._

" _How was it?" Shaun asks, as if they haven't spent the past three years apart, as if they talk like this every day._

" _Fine," he says, dazed._

" _You okay?"_

" _Yeah, I just- went back to, you know. When we fought."_

" _When?"_

" _When we almost broke up." It feels like such a relief, like suddenly being told the world wasn't ending after all; it never happened, it was an almost, not the end._

_"We did?" Shaun frowns, "I don't remember ever wanting that."_

_"When you found that letter-"_

_"Oh. I didn't want to then." This, though, has the cringe-worthy quality of sounding like it was probably true even in the past where they're apart. "Did you?"_

_"No. But- I went back to then. I- I changed things. I didn't mean to. But- it changed things, so we're together now."_

_"And if you hadn't?" Shaun asks. "What was it like, before you went back?"_

_"You hated me."_

_And Desmond realizes suddenly that the something that's different is everything- they were never apart. He changed something and everything is changed now and what's different is that this feels right. What really happened, that feels wrong, and this, this is the way they're supposed to be._

" _There was- we had a fight, I wanted to join another team, to leave you. And I'd- I'd actually gone through with it," his words break freely now, tumbling and smashing like a storm, "we were apart for three years and I hated it, it was a mistake, and when I went back, I couldn't do it again, but in the real past, it really happened and I left you."_

" _Then what happened?" Shaun pulls a chair over to the Animus, gaze on Desmond, caught somewhere between fascinated disbelief and horror._

" _We stayed that way. I- God, Shaun, I'm so glad it didn't really happen, not anymore. You've no idea."_

" _I never want to," Shaun says, and Desmond just wants to cry, because he does know, he knows so well what it would feel like to lose him, and the relief that he doesn't have to live like that anymore, that he never really did- it saves him._

Desmond wakes up wishing he didn't have to. It's cruel, that in every world but the waking one, he and Shaun are together. This means something, like Desmond is trying to tell himself something by forcing himself to relive it and relive it and relive it. Confronting a mistake has never been easy- this is an agony that tears him to pieces and leaves him standing, broken.

Desmond wanders into the kitchen at six, to find Shaun at the table, slowly spinning the phone on the tabletop.

"Someone called for you," Shaun says flatly. "Eva. Said to call if you change your mind."

"I won't." He finds himself staring at the spot by the window where Shaun first kissed him. "I'm staying here." It's too late, of course it's too late, but some part of him had hoped these words would replace the wrong answer he gave last time.

"Oh." Shaun pauses, and the phone slows in its lazy rotations, and then he says casually, as if it means nothing and won't change anything at all, "I might leave."

This is all it takes. At the hurt panic that assaults him, Desmond understands his own betrayal, because it was more than the mistake he thought it was. It's staying alive only to die again and again. It was telling Shaun, clearer than any words could have, that he wasn't good enough. It wasn't ruining himself, it was destroying Shaun, too.

"Shaun-" he hesitates, "I really want to talk to you." Shaun shrugs, and Desmond takes this as a reluctant allowance. He remains where he is, trying not to see that place by the window where he wishes they never left.

"Leaving you was the worst thing I ever did," he says, and in his mind, he can hear the way Shaun said _you're unduly attractive, it's like you're doing it on purpose._

Shaun looks shocked, like he expected Desmond to say it was the best thing.

"It's not like anyone forced you to," he says bitterly. Desmond has to wonder exactly how much he's hurt Shaun, because Shaun never shows it.

"I know," he says, hears the long-gone tapping of the rain and hears himself say,  _I'm glad it worked then, even if I didn't know I was doing it. It did work, right?_ "I just- I know. It was stupid, I just didn't work that out until later." He pauses, forces himself to be honest, "about an hour later, actually."  _Want to see how much?_ Shaun had asked, kissed him to show him, and Desmond had felt like nothing would ever come between them. What he wouldn't give to have that back, he used to think, but now, he's already given  _everything_ , and he still has nothing back of what he and Shaun used to have.

"You could have come back," Shaun says this quietly, so quietly it's like he's been saying this since Desmond left but only just reached an audible volume. What's worse is that even if Desmond had known, he's not sure he would have come back anyways.

"I don't know if I could have." He wanders over to the window, stays a pace away from that one spot, "why I left- it wasn't you, it really wasn't, it was me, and I don't think I could have come back."

Shaun says nothing, and Desmond knows he wants to say  _see if I fucking care,_ to prove something to both of them _._ He's said that before to other people and Desmond has always felt like it's been directed at him, but there's still that silent hurt on his face that makes Desmond feel worse. "I thought- what we had, I thought I could- find that somewhere else. And that I wouldn't feel like there was… I dunno, something  _wrong_ with me."

"There's-" Shaun starts to say, comfort in his voice because old habits never really go away, before he snatches back whatever he was about to say and falls into silence.

"I was right," Desmond says. He leans back against the window, looks over at Shaun. Shaun is still at the table, chin propped in his hand and his fingertips are pushing his glasses a little crooked, that way that always made Desmond's heart go out to him. "There's obviously something wrong with me, just not that. I never did find what we had from anyone else, I know I'm not going to and I was stupid to try and look and I just-" he trails off, wishes again that he could know  _just_   _some_  of what Shaun thinks. "What I did was stupid and it just proves I'm screwed up and fucking heartless. But I'm sorry." Shaun just looks at him, unreadable as ever.

"What happened?" he finally asks, "in your memories, what made you…"

"I went back to when we fought," Desmond says, "to the night before it."

"So? Nothing happened that night."

"I know." Desmond hesitates, can't find any words to explain how it felt, to know that his life was once like that, to know what he destroyed. "Knowing what it'd be like later… it felt different. And the next morning… I didn't go through with it. I couldn't." He can see all those alternate possibilities in Shaun; that's what makes this so hard. He can see that Shaun would have forgiven him, if that memory had been what they really went through. He can see that Shaun wouldn't have believed him, if he'd come back like he did in his dream and said they'd been apart. He can see all this and more, all these possibilities, and it hurts to know he chose the one that would hurt the most. "I told you the truth instead."

"You  _lied_ to me?"

And there it is. The way his voice breaks and shatters, the horrified hurt on his face, now it's obvious. He isn't over it. Shaun hasn't moved on. Desmond's last saving grace is gone- all this time, Shaun's been hurting too.

"I said that… that it was too much for me to handle. And it was, but I didn't- I didn't tell you the rest."

"So, what, then?" Shaun snaps, "care to tell me what you told my past self? Because I sure as hell don't have those memories. All  _I_ know is that you just up and left because I wasn't  _worth_ it." Shaun's never been very good at sounding just angry; his pain always sneaks in and takes hold of every word.

"I was scared of screwing everything up and losing you. Pretty damn ironic, now, because that's exactly what I did." He stares at the floor, shakes his head, "it was only worth it if I had you and I thought I'd end up ruining everything and end up with nothing. And I thought- I thought there was something wrong with me, for wanting you. And you deserved someone that didn't feel like that."

"Why didn't you-" Shaun starts.

"I only did it when I went back because I knew what was going to happen if I didn't. I hate what happened, not being with you, I can't do it anymore." He's terrified Shaun's going to say  _you're going to have to,_ because it's exactly what he deserves. He already feels so dangerously close to falling apart, to losing whatever it is that keeps him going and having  _nothing_ left. "I know there's no reason to take me back, I know that, and that I never should have left, because you were worth everything and I couldn't accept it, I know, but the last three years- God, it feels like we weren't ever supposed to have those, it was so- if I'd just done what I should have, like I did when I went back- I told you the truth, and I told you I loved you- and I don't know why I didn't do that for real, because all this never would have happened-" his voice breaks and suddenly Shaun's arms are around him, and he's held close and safe as he feels himself fall apart. "I'm just so sorry," he manages, turning his face against Shaun's shoulder. "I just didn't know what to do. I love you."

It seems more surreal than the revisited past or his own dreams ever did, being so close to Shaun again. It almost feels like he never left, that it still feels like they were designed to go together, but even if they had been, that never could have changed.

"I never wanted you to leave," Shaun says softly, "I loved you. Still do. This time…"

"I couldn't," Desmond promises, because now he knows this painfully well. He wants to tell his past self this will happen, that the hurt does eventually come to an end and that three years after tearing out his heart, he'll get it back, because now he feels his heartbeat back where it belongs, a steady soothing. He wants to tell that past self, the one that was in so much pain, to listen closely and hear this too. But maybe if he hadn't lived without his heart, in that silence of pain, he wouldn't have realized how much he needed it, maybe he would have taken it for granted. Whatever would have happened, he can't tell his past self anything, he can't change what he did, all he can do is be grateful that all that pain brought him here, be grateful because that pain is all he knows and maybe another path would have made him end up alone. What happened is all he knows, all he can trust to have ended him up here, with Shaun.

They stand still as the world rushes around them, and all he can hear is his- Shaun's- their- heartbeat.


End file.
